Image is of Chronic Illness Cat – a siamese with blue eyes. Text says “Anxiety? Depression? It’s all in your head. NO SHIT.”

So. Apparently it’s invisible illness week. I’m going to do two posts. My first one here is about the mental aspect of my chronic illness. Tomorrow, I’ll do the physical one.

I have depression.

I have PTSD.

I have OCD.

I have GAD.

To many, even me, it looks like an alphabetical clusterfuck. I take three different medications a day to try and keep my brain from frazzling out. I am in therapy – I have been for four years and a half years and will be for the foreseeable future.

Some days my future is bleak.

Some days I can’t leave my apartment.

Others, I can’t leave my bed.

Some days, I am fully functional.

It isn’t a one size fits all.

There is no cure.

I only learn to live.

To adapt.

To change.

And to grow.

But, I’ve accepted it. These things suck balls, that much is true.

But it doesn’t change the fact I’m an awesome and compassionate friend.

I don’t remember how old I was when my depression started, but I was fairly young. I’ve been playing Russian Roulette with anti depressants for as long as I can remember, just having them shot at me in hopes that one would work. I’ve been hospitalized. I’ve been in group homes. I’ve been in group therapy. I’ve been in outpatient therapy for years now. And yet, I’m still fucked up in the head.

I feel overwhelming hopelessness. Does it ever get better than this? Is this the life I’m destined to live? Let me tell you, life with depression is sucked. I have confirmed GAD, ED-NOS, PTSD, and Major Depression. If that looks like alphabet soup to you, that’s general anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, and an eating disorder. I also have OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder. I’m currently on two medications. And they’re not helping. I’m in therapy. And it’s not helping.

What more can I do? What more do I do? Let me give you a peak at what it’s like. Let me give you an insight of what it’s like. It’s like you’re trying to reach out your hand for help, and you can see someone, something, anything in the distance, but it’s just barely out of grasp. You reach and you reach and you try to grab onto that something – that hope, that thing in the distance you’re hanging on for, but it’s just out of grasp. You can’t cling it. You can’t grasp onto it. And you’re feebly trying to hold onto it, but instead you’re just grasping at thin air.

It’s like you’re standing in the middle of a crowded room. People all around you, but you’re ignored. You’re invisible. No one sees you. No one sees the pain you’re hiding. The grief, the sorrow, the agony, the heartbreak.

You weep and you cry, alone. You’re broken. The pieces of the Lego kit don’t make the castle, it makes a broken puzzle. You try so hard to be whole, you try so hard to be COMPLETE, but something is missing. Something just isn’t there. You want it to be, oh, you want it to be, but it’s not.

You’re empty. Completely empty. You try to find things to fill you up – cutting, drinking, video games, movies, school, but nothing fills it. Instead, you become even more empty. Even more withdrawn. Even more depressed. Everything falls apart. Everything falls at your feet. You try so hard, so hard to hold it together, but you can’t.

You panic over everything. You freak over everything. You count things. You arrange things. You make things just so. You replay everything over and over in your head. Rewind the video tape, start it over. You check things constantly, because what if you didn’t lock that door? What if you didn’t turn off that oven? You taunt yourself with every possible thing that could go wrong, and you’re driving yourself nuts inside your own head.

Suicide sounds appealing. Not because you want to die, but because living is just too much. At times, it’s at the point where you don’t want to live but you don’t want to die. You just want to cease to exist. To pull into a cocoon, and rest and rest and rest. You want everything to go on around you, while you’re just hiding from the world. But at the same time, you want to be out in that world you’re hiding from. You want to be free from your thoughts and your chains and your baggage and your bondage and your past.

Sleep isn’t even a rest, sleep isn’t even a solace. Nightmares taught you, you struggle to fall asleep, you struggle to stay asleep. Tossing and turning, fear and panic. This is your every night. This is your life. This is how you are.

And this is what life with my mental health is life. This is just a small peak. I could go longer, but I doubt anyone gives a shit enough to read it. This is how I have to function. And I hate it. I hate every moment of it.

i hate how i’m feeling lately.i don’t know that it’s depression. i’m not sad. i’m not sad, no, not really. sadness isn’t the quite the right word. i mean yeah, i feel overwhelming sadness some days but it’s not the overarching feeling. it’s not the primary feeling. it’s not the main thing i feel.apathy? sure, i’ve given up caring about cleaning (really need to do that, my area of the apartment is godawful) and i’ve given up caring about life, the future, what happens to me. i have hopes and dreams but who am i fooling? they’ll never happen. my health will never improve to the point where i’m able to hold down a job. i can barely handle school, what kind of idiot am i to think that i’ll be able to have a future?then, what? hopeless? i guess you could say that, but i don’t even know if it’s the right word. sad? depressed? none of these words seem quite right. lonely? scared? overwhelmed? i don’t even know what words describe me anymore. if there are words. if there are any words.i’m scared to see a doctor, scared to be honest. scared to let people see how things really are. what if they judge me? what if they don’t like me? what if they can’t help me? so instead, i let myself spiral.i let the anxiety take over. i let the fear take over. i let the what-ifs take over. when talking, face-to-face talking, i either lock down or i’ve been dealing with this stuff for so long that i’ve learned how to mask it, learned how to downplay it, so things aren’t really as bad as i realize. i tend to downplay things and let them go into they are super sonic bad… case in point, recent ear infection.i feel scared and helpless and alone and like a failure.and this emptiness. and despair. and the feeling that i will never pull myself out.i know i’m not fooling everyone, that would be naive. but why do i try? why don’t i give people a chance? it’s like i’ve been hurt and hurt and hurt so i’m scared to show the truth.will they love me less? doubtful. so why do i let myself believe such things? why don’t i just trust? why am i so scared?why do i feel like falling into self injury? and i’m not suicidal, but i’ll be damned if i don’t think about death. if i don’t think about a break from the mental and physical pain. i know it’s not an option, but damn if it doesn’t come to mind.i hate feeling like this. i hate feeling that things will never get better. because… what if that feeling is right?

It’s funny the impact just eating has on me. It’s a natural human process. It’s something we have to do to survive. And yet, it’s something that I struggle with and that tears me apart.

I had a good dinner tonight. Best I’ve had in quite awhile. And because of that, I’m still awake even though it’s 2 am. My brain won’t be quiet. Lord knows it’s a good thing I ate as my weight is the lowest it’s been in years. Lord knows I need the calories and nutrients. But it’s difficult.

I know I’ve lost weight lately. I know I should care more about getting food into my system. But it’s difficult to muster up the willingness to care. It’s difficult to get food into me. I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to get myself to eat. It’s terrifying, really, the way this disorder, this sickness controls me.

I don’t want to be this way, but I don’t know how to be any other. And frankly, to cross to the other side is terrifying. To recover. To be healed. To be whole. It’s kind of a paradox because I don’t want to get better yet I want to. I want to yet I don’t now how. What if I don’t like being healthy? What if I gain too much weight? What if I flip to the other extreme and start eating too much?

And now it’s approaching 3. And I still can’t sleep. And it’s taken me THIS long to write this short of an entry. But why? I don’t want to finally meet the diagnostic criteria for anorexia, because on one hand while I feel ED-NOS is “not legit”, I know it is. I know that you don’t have to be severely underweight to die or have serious health effects from an eating disorder.

But at the same thing… it’s kind of like a verse in the Bible. “The things I don’t want to do I do, the things I want to do I don’t.” It just feels that I get trapped. Completely Trapped.

And I don’t now what to do. It’s hard because I’m having a bad PTSD night. It’s well after 3 am, everyone is asleep. Everyone, that is, but me. Because I’m scared to sleep. Because I’m afraid of what will happen if I sleep. Because being scared to sleep as a child is still ingrained in me. because I’m still at my core, terrified.